


Brave

by Tlern467



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28064844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tlern467/pseuds/Tlern467
Kudos: 1





	Brave

Brave 

Sunlight danced through the windows of the compact apartment on the frontier, a small backwater planet in a backwater system. Yet like the Ilusive Man himself insinuated in Shepard's last terse exchange, Cerberus has eyes everywhere. Kelly Chambers anxiously paced in her small, sparsely adorned living space. Shepard shook her head.  
"Never is easy, is it?" she said, more to herself than to Kelly. Her modified M7 Scorpion still hummed with heated thermal clips; a hit team of six lay dead just outside. Two of the six had the best cybernetic enhancements money or opportunity could buy. Not thugs this time like the bunch of Batarian and turian low rent mercs on their trail last time. These were sharpened killers-assassins: Cerberus really didn't want any loose ends.  
"I don't know what I'm gonna do, Shepard. I-I mean I took every precaution. I wiped my ID, came out here, didn't talk to any of the locals. My parents think I'm dead. How did they find me?" She paused, tears streaming down her cheeks. "What happens if they find me next time and you're not there. I'm scared, Shepard. Really, really scared. Hell, this is worse than when those Collectors tore apart our ship and put us in those cages."  
"We'll figure it out, Kelly," Shepard said. "It's gonna be okay." Shepard pecked Kelly on the cheek.  
"I just don't know where to go next. I can't go to Alliance space-Cerberus people will find me for sure. Can't stay here. I just, don't know." She sighed and slumped to the floor near the wreckage of a table that broke one of the assassin's backs.  
Shepard looked over the place and sighed. What she wouldn't give to be out here in the middle of nowhere with no Reapers coming or Cerberus hunting down her love. But that wasn't to be-and it's because both of them made the choices that needed to be made when they needed to be made.  
"You're very brave my love," Shepard said, sitting beside her. Shepard let Kelly rest her head in her lap.  
"Am I?" Kelly said, wavering between laughing and crying in her voice. "Because I sure don't feel like it."  
"No one does," Shepard said. "I'm scared often, you know that?"  
"Really?"  
"Oh yeah. When I first met Sovereign, when Harbinger and his Collectors first came down. When I lost you and the rest of the crew. I was terrified."  
"I didn't know. You just, seemed to...I don't know, shoulder it so well."  
Shepard laughed. "Well thank you, Kelly. I meant what I said though. You are brave, and we will figure this out together. I'm not losing you to Cerberus again."  
Kelly chuckled. "I suppose not."  
For several peaceful moments the two didn't say a word. Shepard idly stroked her fingers through Kelly's long auburn hair and hummed an old tune from her time in Akuze. She didn't remember the words of course, just that it was taught by her Mess Seargent when he livened the mess hall. That massacre seemed so long ago now.  
"Shepard?"  
"Hm?"  
"Do you think we can win all this?" she said softly and gestured wildly.  
"We have to, don't we?"  
"That's not what I asked."  
"I know."  
Shepard took a deep breath. "I'm not sure, Kelly. Maybe it's too late, but I got to try. The Reapers aren't taking my galaxy without a fight, that's for damn sure. Cerberus isn't handing it over to them wily nily either."  
Kelly laughed. "You know...I believe you." She leaned up and kissed Shepard's neck then placed her head gently back in Shepard's lap.  
Shepard looked down at the peaceful expression on Kelly Chambers' face and couldn't help shake the feeling she'd be too late next time, that this was gonna be the last time either of them saw each other alive. It was hard to say why-but Shepard knew better than to immediately discard any intuitions like this.  
What could she do to change that?  
Images flashed in her minds eye of a war torn hell scape, a blur of violence and death and desperation. At the end-a glowing light. Searing pain. And at the end of the glowing light she was compelled to see-nothing. A vast blanket of light and infinite pain, but also-nothing.  
Then just as quickly as the vision came, it retreated and she was back here in the quiet apartment.  
Shepard needed to be brave.  
She kissed Kelly with a new urgency like nothing she felt before, and the two held each other and cried.


End file.
